comprehension of the text, and the average score of all subjects at a test point is indicative of the community’s intelligibility of the speech variety of the story’s origin. Included with the test point’s
average score is a calculation for the variation between individual subjects’ scores, known as standard deviation, which helps in interpreting how representative those scores are.
After each story, subjects are asked questions such as how different they felt the speech was from their own and how much they could understand. These subjective post-RTT responses give an additional
perspective for interpreting the objective test data. If a subject’s answers to these questions are comparable with his or her score, it gives more certainty to the results. If, however, the post-RTT
responses and test score show some dissimilarity, then this discrepancy can be investigated.
Refer to appendix C1 for a more complete description of Recorded Text Testing, as well as to Casad 1974. The stories and questions used in the testing also appear in appendix C2. In appendix C3, the
demographic profiles of the subjects at each test site, the test scores and the post-HTTRTT responses are given.
3.2.2 Site selection
The primary objective of this study was to investigate the comprehension of speakers of Tamil Muthuvan and Malayalam Muthuvan of each other’s variety. There is only occasional contact between these two
Muthuvan groups. In this study, two stories were developed one in a Tamil Muthuvan settlement and the other in a Malayalam Muthuvan settlement and tested. Another objective was to investigate the reported
variation among Mannan speech varieties. For this purpose, one story was developed from a northern part of the Mannan-speaking area and tested in a southern part. Table 8 summarises the information about the
stories and map 3 shows the test sites.
Table 8. Stories utilised in this project
Languagespeech variety Location
Tahsil District
Tamil Muthuvan Kozhiyala
Devikulam Idukki
Malayalam Muthuvan Thalayirappan
Devikulam Idukki
Mannan Kodakallu
Devikulam Idukki
Map 3. RTT and LUAV sites.
© NLCI 2015 Source: NLCI. 2015. Used with permission.
3.2.2.1 Kozhiyala Tamil Muthuvan
A Tamil Muthuvan story was recorded in Kozhiyala, a settlement of Devikulam Tahsil. Kozhiyala is an interior settlement that is situated in the forest. This would represent a central area of the Tamil
Muthuvan variety. Idamalakudi is also a major settlement of Muthuvan and may be the most geographically central place for Tamil Muthuvan. However, the researchers could not get permission to
enter that area.
3.2.2.2 Thalayirappan Malayalam Muthuvan
Malayalam Muthuvan is spoken in Adimali block of Devikulam tahsil. Most of the settlements are in very interior locations. A Malayalam Muthuvan story was recorded in Thalayirappan settlement. The
settlement is six kilometres away from Adimali town and more easily accessible than other Malayalam Muthuvan settlements. This ideal location both represented the Malayalam Muthuvan variety and allowed
the surveyors to have good contact with the people.
3.2.2.3 Kavakudi Tamil Muthuvan
Kavakudi is a Tamil Muthuvan settlement. It represents the north-eastern concentration of Tamil Muthuvan settlements. This site was selected for gauging comprehension of Tamil Muthuvan people of
the Malayalam Muthuvan text from Thalayirappan. Another reason for selecting this site was to investigate the acceptability of the language used in the Kozhiyala story that comes under the central area
of Tamil Muthuvan variety.
3.2.2.4 Kodakallu Mannan
A Mannan story was collected from the settlement of Kodakallu in Devikulam tahsil to investigate whether there is any variation in the Mannan variety, as had been reported by this people group. It was
believed that recording a story in one extreme end of the area and administering comprehension testing with it in another extreme end of the area would help clarify this situation. It was reported that people in
Kodakallu speak a pure variety of the Mannan language, as compared with other Mannan settlements in that region. This is an interior village and has little direct contact with outsiders. The researchers had
already made good contacts with the residents, which also supported the selection of this site for story collection.
3.2.2.5 Kumily Mannan
Kumily is located at an extreme southern end of the Mannan area. It was reported that their speech form has a unique style. Thus, it appeared to be a good location in which to check the acceptability and
understanding of the speech form used in the Kodakallu story.
3.2.3 Intelligibility testing results and analysis
